


The Haunting of Harmony Lake

by augusteofarles



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Case Fic, Gen, Hallucination Lucifer (Supernatural) | Hallucifer, Hallucinations, Hospitalization, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Can't Catch a Break, Sam Winchester Has Mental Health Issues, This is set after swan song but doesn’t follow the events after
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 17:21:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17923109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augusteofarles/pseuds/augusteofarles
Summary: Of course Sam Winchester would end up in haunted psychiatric hospital.





	The Haunting of Harmony Lake

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo this came out of no where and probably has a ton of mistakes but here it is. Also sorry for any inaccuracies in regards to the hospital.

The sky is still dark grey when she pulls up into her parking spot.  

_ Reserved for Dr. Sarah Morgan  _ the sign reads. 

She remembers the thrill of seeing it on her first day at the job. Later she had cried on her drive back home, determined that she had chosen the wrong career, assured that she would not return again. 

 

It’s mid April and it’s been raining for three days straight with no end in sight. The days have been passing by in a gloomy, sunless haze. It isn’t good for the patients and if she’s being honest with herself, it’s not good for her either. 

 

Amy, at the front desk is half asleep when she walks in, but straightens up when she notices her.    
“Good morning Dr. Morgan.” She’s smiling tooth to tooth. She’s new, and determined to please. 

The small kitchenette in the staff quarters is empty when she enters, save for Mark who had the night shift and looks like it. She deliberately walks past the coffee machine and pours herself a cup of hot water, adds a slice of lemon into it from the fridge. She’s on her third day of her caffeine free journey and it’s been an arduous one. Mark eyes the water wearily with a lift of a tired eyebrow. “Good luck with that,” he says after she explains, and takes a sip of the dark, steaming coffee from his own mug. Sarah tries not to look like a junkie staring at her next hit. 

 

The first patient of the day is Ellie. 

“I feel a little off today,” Ellie says. She’s hunched over a bit, her fingers wrapped around a styrofoam cup of tea. 

“The weather has a big effect on your mood” she says and assures her that she has improved greatly. It’s the truth. She’ll likely be discharged in a few days. Ellie smiles brightly when Sarah mentions this, her dimples in full show and it warms her heart. 

It’s moments like these that bring her back here. Improvements. A sign that she has made a difference in her line of work. 

She jots down a few notes in Ellie’s file. 

She’ll make sure to remind all the patients of the effects long nights and gloomy weather can have on a person. 

 

She hesitates a moment when she reaches the door to her next patient, as she often does. 

Sam Winchester is a model patient.  

Except on the days when he is not. 

 

“Good morning, Sam,” Sarah says.

She’s not surprised to find him awake. He’s up before most of the patients, it’s one of the reasons she schedules his sessions so early in the day, the other being that he seems to be more lucid in the mornings. Sam tends to get more agitated as the day goes on. 

She finds him perched by the large window next to his bed, triple glazed and specifically made to withstand high impact, which Sam has tested out on various occasions. 

“How are you feeling today?” 

Sarah takes a hold of the small armchair set by the wall, surprisingly light, pushes it towards the center of the room to face Sam, and takes a seat. It’s the only other furnishing in the room aside from a bed and a small side table. Sam hasn’t acknowledged her presence, either willingly ignoring her or not having realized she’s there. 

She pulls the edges of her sleeves down to her knuckles, wishes she had a mug of coffee in her hands, and tries again. 

“Sam?”

He turns to her, finally, his eyebrows furrowed. 

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” he says, an afterthought, like she’s interrupted something, and turns back to the window. He’s in nothing but the light white t-shirt and pajama pants of his patient uniform, the blue robe tossed aside by the bed, either forgotten or ignored. He doesn’t turn to her. 

Their talk will likely be one sided today, Sarah can already tell. On days like these, when he removes himself from the world around him, its best to keep it simple and present. 

“It’s quite chilly in here, isn’t it?” she says. “Maybe you should put on your robe.”

“I’m fine,” he says again, “I feel fine,” and nods like he’s reassuring himself more than her. 

“That’s good to hear.” 

He fiddles with the bandage on his right hand, a remnant of an especially bad day a few weeks back. The broken chair is gone from the room, his bandaged hand and a yellowing bruise on Jerry’s left cheek are the remaining evidence of the incident. Most of the nurses aren’t too thrilled to get involved when it comes to Sam but Jerry is an ex marine and swears up and down that Sam must have been military. Sarah’s beginning to have her own doubts if his immaculate reflexes are anything to go by. It’s dangerous to be around him when he isn’t lucid, even for a man with Jerry’s background. 

Afterward, when Sam had come to, sweat drenched and gasping with guilt in his eyes, Jerry had said,  _ you sure got a mean swing, kid, _ not at all in malice. It hadn’t been Jerry he had been aiming for, after all. 

Sam has two angels on his shoulders, and both of them are bad. 

“It’s been too long,” he says suddenly. He speaks like this often, voicing whatever disjointed line of thoughts are running through his mind in the moment with no context. Sarah doesn’t need it in this case but she asks anyway. 

“What has, Sam?”

“Has he called?” He’s fidgety and blinks too fast. Sarah should have seen this coming. It’s not the usual dissociation that’s keeping him quiet and guarded. He’s worried. 

“No,” she says. “I’m sure he will-”

“It’s been too long,” he says again, shaking his head. There’s a sort of desperation in his voice and he repeats it a few times under his breath. He turns back to the window like if he looks long enough he’ll find what he’s looking for. 

“Your brother is fine, Sam,” he flinches a little at  _ brother.  _ “He’s gone away for a short while, remember? On a business trip. He’ll be back soon.” 

_ He went on a hunting trip,  _ is what Sam had said. 

When she had spoken to his brother, he had informed her that he would be taking a week long business trip a few towns over but that if there was an emergency,  _ even a small one,  _ she was to call him.  _ And if you don’t get an answer on this number, try this one,  _ and then he had hesitated at the door of her office and given her a third number for good measure. 

Sarah has known Dean Winchester for almost two years now and she still isn’t sure what it is he does for a living and from the sounds of it, he isn’t too sure himself.  _ Investments and all that Jazz. Haha. You know the drill.  _

He’s a gruff man in his mid thirties who looks more like a member of a biker gang or a hardened lumberjack than he does a businessman. He swears like a sailor and flirts with her when Sam is having a good day. He either visits his brother religiously or disappears for weeks on end. He always returns, a bruise here, a limp there. 

The Winchester family business may not be hunting monsters, but Sarah is more than certain that it isn’t anywhere in the realms of being legal. 

“Have you had any sleep last night?”

“A little.”

“Are you having any headaches?” 

“No it’s- I’m fine I just-”

She waits, gives him time to sort his thoughts out in his head. 

“Dr. Morgan, I need to make a call.”

“Do you remember what we spoke about on our last session?” she says, “it’s important to prioritize yourself, your peace of mind.” 

Sam’s too busy bouncing his leg to listen, there’s bags under his eyes. He’s lethargic, running on nothing but manic energy, she can tell now. He turns to her finally, eyes big and tired, “he doesn’t have anyone to watch his back,” it comes out quiet and fast, “I should be there with him,” he says and runs a shaky hand through his hair. “I’m always letting him down.” 

There’s an old photograph on his bedside table, the only item in the room that says there’s a person occupying it, that isn’t just off white, medical, impersonal. It’s of Sam himself, baby-faced and smiling, a women beside him, blonde and bright. It’s hard to fathom that he’s the same man sitting before her, except in moments like these, raw and honest when he looks young and lost, and it becomes a little more fitting that Dean calls him  _ Sammy.  _

 

Two years ago, Sam was found in the middle of a cemetary, naked and covered in mud. He’d spent three months in a catatonic state down in Goldswater Hospital a town over, until one day the nurse had found him out of bed, wandering aimlessly down the hospital halls. 

_ I crawled out of the ground,  _ he’d said when Sarah had asked her how he had ended up in a cemetery. 

When they’d transferred him to Harmony Lake, s he’d spent six months trying to coax a word out of him. Six silent months until one day he had turned to her, green-blue eyes boring into hers. 

_ You want the truth?  _ he’d said, less a question and more like a threat, like she would regret ever asking. And then he had spoken, a dam opening and the words spilling out. 

He’d began from the start. About his home in Lawrence, Kansas that he never got to know. About his mother, burning on the ceiling of his nursery. About the demon blood running through his veins. The family business, monsters and ghosts and  _ other things going bump in the night.  _ How he had left for college, had set himself free from it all.  _ I’d never really been free, _ he’d say bitterly, more to himself and less to her.  _ He was there even then.  _

She really had regretted asking when he’d starting speaking about  _ him.  _ About the cage and everything that happened in the cage. An apocalypse he’d started and ended.

Religious delusions were no news to her but it was safe to say that Sam had the brightest imagination of all her patients.

Sarah takes a breath, taps her fingers on the side of the hard armchair. It’s not a good idea to play into Sam’s delusions but it’s always a hard gamble. Normally Sam doesn’t care about Sarah’s opinion, already assured of her disbelief and indifferent to it. He doesn’t concern himself with proving a point or getting people to see his side of the world like other patients. 

“Your brother is not in any danger, Sam. And you are most definitely not letting him down.”

“I need to make a call,” he says again, holds her gaze this time, all business. “Please.” 

He’s made many calls over the last few days and hasn’t been able to reach Dean. Sarah’s tried calling the numbers that Dean has left with her, she even left a voicemail on  _ Dean’s other other phone,  _ whatever that means, but so far hasn’t gotten a call back. 

Sarah sighs.

“You can make a call after breakfast.”

“Thank you,” Sam says, relief bleeding out of him. 

“Why do you think you’re letting your brother down, Sam?”

“Because I’m supposed to be there with him,” he says.“I’m...it’s my job, you know. I watch out for him, he watches out for me. But..now I’m here and I can’t” He looks down at his bandaged hand, “I’m not the same.”

“Your brother doesn’t hold that against you, Sam.”

“Well yeah,” he says, a corner of his mouth lifting in a tired smile. “But that’s just cus he has this whole  _ older brother  _ thing going. He takes every bad thing that happens to me as a personal fault.”

“Maybe it runs in the family?” Sarah says and gets a laugh out of him.

“Yeah I guess it does.”

The small light bulb on the left corner of the room flickers off and on again in the next instant. They both turn to it, Sam’s single minded train of thoughts on Dean’s whereabouts seemingly halted, distracted for the first time today. 

“That’s the third time this morning” he says and eyes it warily. 

“It must be the rain,” Sarah says. It’s best to have the bulb changed before things escalate. 

“If Dean was in your place,” Sarah says bringing Sam’s attention back to her. “If he was sick and needed some time to heal, to get better. Would you hold that against him?”

Sam is quiet for a moment, playing with the bandage again. 

“No,” he says. 

“Then maybe you should cut yourself some slack?”

“Right,” Sam says, “that doesn’t exactly run in the family.” 

Sarah smiles. She thinks she’s gotten to know Sam quite well since she’s met him. He’s a Stanford graduate and has a sharp tongue on him when he’s not talking about ghosts and demons and a delightfully deadpan sense of humor. He’s self deprecating and has an incredibly strong base of morals. Sarah had once overheard him reprimanding a patient who had taken old Lucy’s lunch. He’d given it back, red faced and Sam had gone back to his table and to his vow of silence. For all intents and purposes, Sam Winchester was a kind, good man and at some point Sarah had found herself celebrating his wins and mourning his relapses on too personal a level. Maybe she’s chosen the wrong career after all. 

 

They don’t make a lot of progress, as Sarah had predicted. His answers are brief and don’t make a lot of sense. He spends the first half of the session looking out the window until the light drizzle of the rain is a waterfall obscuring his view of the outside. By the end, he alternates between looking at the flickering lights and somewhere behind her, the fingers of his right hand pressing down hard on the scar between his left thumb and forefinger, a sign that he’s distracted by the demons in his head that Sarah can’t see. Or angels. It’s hard to keep up when it comes to Sam. 

“Try to get some sleep if you can, Sam,” she says on her way out. She jots down some notes in Sam’s file and considers adjusting his medication. 

The hallway is quiet and mostly empty when she exits his room. The air is chilly around her, the rain splattering on the windows, making a ruckus. She stops, takes a look at her watch. She has some free time before her next session and as her head gives a pain of protest, she considers having that cup of coffee after all. 

As she walks, the narrow lights lining the long corridors flicker out for an instant and turn back on again


End file.
